I recently had a phone interview with a law school that I am interested in attending. Is it appropriate for me to send a thank-you letter to my interviewer? Is it expected? Will a quick e-mail suffice? Thanks!

AboveTheLawSchool wrote:I recently had a phone interview with a law school that I am interested in attending. Is it appropriate for me to send a thank-you letter to my interviewer? Is it expected? Will a quick e-mail suffice? Thanks!

Are you on the waitlist, or was this an "I'm just interested" sort of interview? In any case, I think a full blown thank you card might be over-the-top.

I think if you do anything, a short email addressed to the person that interviewed you should suffice. Something along the lines of:

Dear X:I would like to thank you for taking time to interview me over the telephone on (fill in date) about the possibility of attending (fill in law school). I remain very interested in your school and enjoyed hearing about the program/culture/life/academic (something simple and to the point).Yours truly,-AboveTheLawSchool

To answer your latter question, I'm not sure that it would be expected at that stage. Once you are a 2L doing OCI, it is often the norm to send a card if you have a callback. But I don't think a card is necessary for a phone interview. If you do anything at all, stick to a short email.

Oh, also - yeah, email will definitely be appropriate. They make the admittance decision following the phone interview within 4 hours and a week so email has the best chance of getting there prior to making the decision.

Thank you notes will not hurt you as long as they are short, polite, and sincere. I know that for (professional) job interviews a thank-you note is seen as an unwritten requirement. There isn't an exception for telephone interviews either. Using that as my basis for opinion, I think that sending an email within 24-48 hours of the law school interview would be highly recommended. Some schools keep the thank-you notes in your file, some discard them immediately. Again, it's not going to hurt you either way as long as you write it appropriately and don't misspell words.

I sent a short, handwritten thank you note to one of the associates in an admissions office who arranged a great campus visit for me that included a tour, class, and one-on-one chats with current students. I have no idea if she read/kept the note or if it played any role whatsoever in the admissions decision. However, I was admitted two weeks later so it certainly did not hurt me!

I sent a thank you email to a Dean after an interview. Just a short note like suggested above that basically said, "I appreciated the opportunity to talk with you today about attending XXXX. (Another short sentence)

All I can say really is that it certainly didn't hurt me. I doubt it helped either.

AboveTheLawSchool wrote:I recently had a phone interview with a law school that I am interested in attending. Is it appropriate for me to send a thank-you letter to my interviewer? Is it expected? Will a quick e-mail suffice? Thanks!

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